Do altmetrics capture societal impact beyond citations?

Demonstrate whether specific altmetrics (e.g., Twitter/X mentions, news or blog references, Wikipedia citations, Mendeley readers) capture dimensions of societal impact that are not reflected in scholarly citation counts, and characterize the contexts in which such added value occurs.

Background

Altmetrics are often motivated by the promise of evidencing societal attention and impact, complementing citations that primarily reflect scholarly influence. However, empirical validation against robust quality or impact benchmarks is scarce.

Establishing whether and where altmetrics add unique information beyond citations is essential for their credible use in research evaluation.